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The Academy made history with the long overdue recognition of a female film-maker, but in other respects this year’s ceremony was a night of anticlimaxes As is so often, this year’s list of Oscar winners is exasperatingly mixed and – now that the pre-Oscar period is so hugely crammed with rival awards bonanzas, with the frontrunners exhaustively established – these results seem anticlimactic. It’s as if the awards season has scooped itself. But at least this time there is a resounding and satisfying endorsement for a really excellent film: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a brutally powerful picture about the endgame in Iraq, which made its relatively modest debut at the Venice film festival in 2008 but kept on growing. This, notably, was a movie whose prestige was kept alive by critics. In a digital age when film reviewers are supposed to be losing their lustre, I am almost tempted – almost – to say that this year’s Oscars was a bit of a pat on the back for scribblers, and to lead a virtual delegation of pundits up on stage to accept the Still Unexpectedly Important Taste-Maker award. Except that we’re, erm, not. The critical consensus had also backed Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet as modern masterpieces which deserved to be nominated for best film, best director, etc, and not simply to be ghettoised in the foreign language film section. As it is, the big raspberry of the evening came when these great films lost out anyway. Like my colleague Xan Brooks , I must now confess that I have not yet seen Juan José Campanella’s The Secret of Their Eyes – it is much liked and admired, but I can’t help feeling that this is a real banana-skin moment. It puts me in mind of Ronald Bergan’s online discussion of how, in the history of world cinema, the Oscar for best foreign language film is traditionally given to the wrong film. When Mo’Nique came up to accept her thoroughly deserved best supporting actress Oscar for Precious, she referred to the history of African-Americans at the Academy Awards and alluded to Hattie McDaniel’s triumph way back in 1939. As the winner of the best director award, Bigelow had no such history to draw upon: she is making history. Incredibly, she is the first woman to win a best director award, and it is unfortunately a measure of the casual sexism in the movie business and the awards industry that this omission has been all but unnoticed in the past, and not particularly noticed now. But this was a brilliant film which deserves its landslide. As for Avatar, this was an entertaining and in fact interesting film which, were it not for the massive box office and hype, and James Cameron’s own 600lb-gorilla reputation, might well have been praised for its funky offbeat weirdness. (A virtual reality “avatar” strategic campaign? To insinuate the imperial conqueror into the native community in order to exploit mineral resources? Stra-a-a-nge.) Perhaps this is the moment at which Avatar’s reputation will pop and its supporters will sheepishly slap their foreheads and ask: “What were we thinking?” Well, its massive box-office popularity speaks for itself. But Cameron is not King of the World today. Many nominees have attested to the brutal letdown the loser feels immediately after the Oscar has gone to someone else: the sudden, traumatising invisibility and the disappearance of all that fervent hope. For an alpha player like Cameron, this will be galling. Jeff Bridges is a hugely popular winner of the best actor prize. In any conversation I have ever had about the great man, there is a maximum 10-second delay before someone intones the single, reverent syllable “dude”. Bridges, to a remarkable degree, never appears to act at all – his performance style has the most natural swing to it, and yet, intriguingly, he never appears to be simply playing himself. Crazy Heart is a pretty hokey, sugary film in many ways; it is not one for the ages, nor is it destined for cult status, like The Big Lebowski. But it is certainly a showcase for this tremendous actor, who could be destined for Jimmy Stewart status. It all depends on what roles he gets offered from now on. Sandra Bullock’s prize for best actress in The Blind Side, ahead of Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren and Gabourey Sidibe, will also be considered exasperating and even ridiculous. She won for her Palinesque role as a well-to-do white mom who mentors a disadvantaged African-American boy to become a sports star. To some it is heartwarming and inspirational, to others it is humourless and condescending. In a sort of quasi-Sally-Field moment, Bullock asked the assembled audience if she had simply “worn them down”. But, in truth, Bullock has never been nominated before and has never exactly been an awards contender, but is instead notable chiefly for having garnered a guarded industry respect for being a solid box-office draw outside the US. She has in fact won a Razzie this year for the unspeakable All About Steve, becoming the first performer to get an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year. Perhaps it won’t be long before someone gets the Oscar and the Razzie for the same performance. Bullock is probably a revealing example of the “Raz-car” tendency in Hollywood’s awards season: those big, showy, emoting performances and the massively prestigious films are just two millimetres away from getting Razzies, and there is a batsqueak Razzie note of awfulness in every tearful, back-slapping awards ceremony. On now to the climax of Christoph Waltz’s amazing year – it began with a best actor award at the Cannes film festival in 2009 for his performance as the sinister Nazi “Jew-hunter” in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and now finishes with a best supporting actor Oscar. I was horribly disappointed with Inglourious Basterds, and having re-watched it, I have to say I still am. It is Tarantino’s least interesting and most frustrating film, dramatically boring in the most disconcerting way. My negative review overnight lost me my status as Tarantino’s biggest fanboy – until that point, I had been derisively known among bloggers as the Taranteenie-in-chief. Well, with as little ill-grace as possible, I here concede that I could and should have been more generous about Waltz, who is indeed massively talented, though even now I can’t help pointing out that like Kate Winslet and many other actors in the past at the Oscars, he is being rewarded for a colossal performance as a Nazi. It will be fascinating to see what this tremendous actor does next: another film by Tarantino? Or perhaps something by his fellow Austrian Michael Haneke? Oscars Kathryn Bigelow James Cameron Jeff Bridges Sandra Bullock Michael Haneke Jacques Audiard Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk